It's no joke.
Recently, Jennifer Sullivan who blogs at Adventures in Storytime (and Beyond) took a research deep-dive into the efficacy of summer reading programs. She wanted to explore what the evidence is behind how we set our programs and whether the design of incentivized programs has any real effect on encouraging kids to be readers.
I appreciate her thoughts and research in these two "Evidence-Based Summer Reading Program Design" blog posts.
The Inconvenient Truth of Incentivized Reading Programs, Part 1The Inconvenient Truth of Incentivized Reading Programs, Part 2
Ten years ago, while working at La Crosse Public Library, we broke the tradition of incentivized summer library reading and went prize-less. Instead the team I worked with replaced the old SLP recording and prize methods with a gamified the weekly learning offering and a kid-powered communal activity (building a giant robot mural).
We gave kids agency to choose whether they wanted to read, do activities, check out material, interact within the library or outside in creative learning, writing, talking, making and more. It was a true win-win with a final book at the end for those who wanted to have one.
You can read about that experience here (with links to the other three blog posts that detail the mechanics of the program) at the Tiny Tips for Library Fun blog. For more info, there also a number of posts addressing SLP change at that blog under the tag SLP R/Evolotion
If you still want more, here is a Pinterest board with dozens of links to blog posts and articles about doing summer reading programs differently called Summer Library R/Evolution [Let's talk about new and better ways to do public library youth SRP/SLP. Prizeless? Yes! Badges? Yes! Transliteracy? Yes! Experiential discovery? Yes]
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